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Tyre.' Here Jonah, "flying from the presence of the Lord," found a ship about to sail to Tarshish, "so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it."2 Somewhere within the circuit of those grey walls, "widows stood

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weeping and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas had made whilst she was yet with them." And amongst the tan-pits on the shore once stood, perhaps still stands, the house of Simon the Tanner, where Peter was taught by vision that Jewish exclusiveness was to end, and that henceJonah i. 3.

12 Chron. ii. 16; Ezra iii. 7.

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FIRST VIEW OF THE HOLY LAND.

forth he should "call nothing common or unclean."1 It is our first view of that land,

"Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed,
For our advantage on the bitter cross."

A number of boats, manned by half-naked Arabs, howling, yelling, and fighting like demons, cluster round the steamer. In one of them, retained for the use of our party, the fight is so fierce that our dragoman leaps down into it, and lays about him right and left with his heavy korbash. This proving of no avail, he seizes one of the Arabs by the throat, and throws him into the sea, to sink or swim as it may happen. Order being at length restored, we take our seats in the boat, are skilfully steered through a gap in the reef, and soon find ourselves at the foot of some black slimy steps, leading to the Turkish custom-house. A crowd of wretched creatures press round us, clamouring for backshish. The unpaved road is ankle deep in mud. Foul sights, and yet fouler smells, offend the senses. To most of my companions the sight was altogether new and strange. For myself, having had some previous experience of the filth and squalor of an Oriental town, I was not taken by surprise. But the disenchantment of the rest of the party, as they first set foot on the soil of Palestine, was complete. One American gentleman, who had come prepared to go into ecstasies, and had avowed his intention of falling on his knees on landing, to express his gratitude for being permitted to tread the sacred soil, looked round with a comical expression of bewilderment, and exclaimed, "Is this the Holy Land?"

Picking our way through a tortuous labyrinth of dismal alleys, we found our tents pitched outside the town. The camping ground is a spot of rare beauty. The Mediterranean, of a clear crystalline blue, studded with white sails, rolls up upon the beach. The long coast-line of Philistia runs north and south. Groves of orange, lemon, citron, fig, and pomegranate, vineyards and gardens, the produce of which is famous throughout Syria, form a broad belt round the city. The plain of Sharon, bright with verdure and enamelled with flowers, stretches inland. The mountains of Ephraim, blue against the eastern sky, form a beautiful frame for a lovely picture. It was easy to understand how a name meaning "the beautiful" should have been borne by the town for three thousand years.

The traditional house of Simon the Tanner furnishes, from its flat roof, a fine point of view for this charming scene. And there is reason to believe that the tradition is not far wrong. The house is "by the seaside;" the waves beat against the wall of its courtyard. An ancient well, fed by a perennial spring, furnishes the water needful for the tanner's trade; and tanneries of immemorial antiquity probably go back to the time of Peter's visit or even earlier. The vision here vouchsafed to the Apostle

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gains a new appropriateness on this spot. Joppa has always been the port of Jerusalem. It is, indeed, the only port of Southern Palestine. Thence "the ships of Tarshish" were seen coming and going. The "isles of Chittim" (Cyprus) lie just below the horizon. It was the point at which the Jewish and Gentile world came into contact. Peter looking out over the waters of "the Great Sea" towards Greece and Rome, where the gospel was to win its greatest victories, would be at no loss to apply the lesson taught by the

vision.

The history of Tabitha is fondly remembered by the people of Joppa. Tabitha or Dorcas (ie. the gazelle) is partly a personal name-partly a term of endearment. An annual festival is still celebrated on the 25th of May, when the young people go out into the orange-groves around the town and spend the day in a sort of pic-nic, singing hymns and ballads in her honour.

In modern times Jaffa has acquired a sad notoriety from the infamous massacre of his prisoners, and the alleged poisoning of his plague-stricken troops by Napoleon Bonaparte. The spot is yet pointed out where, amongst the sand-hills on the beach, four thousand Turkish and Albanian troops, who had surrendered as prisoners of war, were shot down in cold blood.

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Passing out from the town we cross the PLAIN OF SHARON, the exquisite fertility and beauty of which made it to the Hebrew mind a symbol of prosperity. "The excellency of Carmel and Sharon" was proverbial. "The earth mourneth and languisheth" when "Sharon is like a wilderness." When the Most High shall again "bring forth a seed out of Jacob and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains," its first result will be that once more "Sharon shall be a fold for flocks."3 In the Song of songs, "I am the Rose of Sharon," is the symbol to express the highest ideal of grace and beauty. As we rode across the plain, bright with the vivid green of early spring, and plucked handfuls of the innumerable flowers-cyclamens, anemones, roses, lilies, tulips and a score of others—which gemmed the turf or grew "unprofitably gay amongst the corn, we could enter into the feelings of Hebrew poets and prophets as they exulted in "the glory of Sharon.' But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain which might support an immense population is almost a solitude. Two or three wretched hamlets, mere clusters of mud huts, are the sole representatives of the numerous and thriving cities which once occupied it. Here and there was a solitary Arab breaking up the clods with a plough which remains unchanged in form from the earliest ages. These were the only signs of life we could discover. Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter," the land is left void

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2 Ibid. xxxiii. 9.

3 Ibid. lxv. 10.

* Cant. ii. I.

Isa. xxxv. 2. The name of one of these hamlets, passed soon after leaving Jaffa, reminds us that we are in the old Philistine territory-Beit Dejan – Beth Dagon, i.e., the house of Dagon, 1 Sam. v. 2.

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